'Medicine errors' involve 7 in 10 care home elderly.

SEVEN out of 10 elderly people living in care homes are the victims of medicine errors, research suggested today.

Overworked staff, poor teamwork and a lack of training all led to mistakes with prescribing, dispensing and administration that could harm people, said a study.

Researchers from universities in Leeds, London and Surrey examined data from 256 residents recruited from 55 care homes across England.

Each resident was typically taking eight medicines each.

The research found that 178 (69.5%) residents had been subject to one or more medication errors - typically two per person.

Of these, 94 residents were the victims of dispensing errors - mistakes with labelling were found on 7.3% of medicines.

A total of 100 people were subject to prescribing errors, including the wrong dose and not enough information on how the drug should be taken.

Overall, 147 residents were given a medicine that required monitoring - of these, 18.4% (27) contained an error.

The drugs most likely to go unchecked for possible side effects were diuretics, the heart drugs ACE inhibitors and amiodarone, and levothyroxine which is used to treat underactive thyroid.

Fifty-seven residents suffered a total of 116 administration errors, including the wrong dose or not being given their drugs at all.

On a scale of zero to 10, with zero meaning no harm and 10 being death, the experts found that the potential harm was 2.6 for prescribing errors, 3.7 for monitoring errors, 2.1 for administration errors and 2 for dispensing errors.

The care homes were located in West Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, and central London.